A Problem re: Credits, Thanks(es), and Kickstarter Backers

I am all about details, so when I'm entering credits into the wiki, you can be damn sure that they are accurate to the letter. And yeah, 99.9% of the people in the "Special Thanks" part will never be of any use to future GB readers, but there just might be that one awesome time that some person is thanked somewhere that someone wants to know about, and they'll find that on this very site maybe thanks to my weird obsessive past time.

But I've run into a conflict. The backer rewards of almost every kickstarter at usually a pretty cheap level offer a space in the "Special Thanks" part of the game's credits. This will lead to 100s if not 1,000s of names of people who (aside from their generous donations) have nothing at all to do with the creation of the game.

So the easy thing to do is just leave that part out completely. But the problem with that then is we'd be missing out on listing backers who are involved with the greater games industry, and therefore connections that someone might care about. For example, I'm pretty sure Ryan helped back a kickstarter or two, and I'd love to be able to see his page here forever linked to those games.

So what do you disturbingly obsesive dedicated wiki editors think? No backers? Some? All? Nobody cares?

(yeah, probably that last one) ;)

Considering the staff got their own pages based on this very logic, why not have all these other people in there?

Well, there's one negative outcome I can think of. When filling in credits in the wiki, often multiple people with common names pop up. So if there are two designers called Joe Smith, you have to do the extra research to make sure you're crediting the right one. If we then start creating pages for all of the potential kickstarter backers also named Joe Smith, that problem becomes quickly compounded. And if there are even a few hundred backers in each of these games, it could end up happening pretty often.

Not to mention that it might also be impossible to know if the Joe Smith who backed game x is the developer Joe Smith, or just a random guy.

Not the biggest deal of course, but it could easily lead to lots of weird misinformation that would be very hard to ever rectify once it's done.

As someone who has just been printed in the special thanks part of an actual, physical manual for a video game, namely the European release of Devil Survivor 2, I fully support the addition of special thanks people to the wiki.

@amatureidiot: Congrats! Although, we actually already do include Special Thanks' in the wiki credits, so you are now part of Giant Bomb history.

My question is specifically how we should include people listed in credits only because they backed a game on a crowdfunding site.

@joshwent: Well, to be fair I'm only in the special thanks because I agreed to buy it early so it could get made, along with a ton of other people, so the crowdfunding thing does probably apply to me. Perhaps only putting up notable backers, who already have a page or are at least well known people in the industry, is the best solution?

As someone who has their name in several video games special thanks sections, considering that all 31774 backers of Double Fine's MASSIVE CHALICE will have their names in the credits, I'd say it is probably for the best to just leave them out, or at most, list the names but don't make pages for the backers.

I think the only way to go around this is to establish a rule which states that if a game promised "Special Thanks" crediting as a Kickstarter backer reward, the Special Thanks section should not be credited in the wiki.

There might be cases where it makes sense to do so, such as projects which had very few backers, or projects which only credit backers in the highest "reward tiers": but then it becomes too vague and unclear how to decide which cases are applicable for crediting in the wiki.

So we need a rule of thumb. I propose the one above.

However, I think that "Producer" credits for Kickstarter backers could still be documented in the wiki, since those are typically reserved for a much smaller group of higher-tiered backers, who donated thousands of dollars.

Still, what if some studio decides to call every small backer a "producer" in an artsy "symbolic" (dumb) gesture?

Yeah this is weird.

But I think that idea of a rule should at least provide a good building ground for solid discussion on this topic. What do you think? Do you agree?

If they already have a credit for something they should definitely be added. Like if Wil Wheaton, for example, was a Kickstarter supporter for a game.

Sounds like an idea. Perhaps denote in the credits page that Will Wheaton was a Kickstarter backer? And if we happened to know which reward tier he was on, should it also go on the site, despite it not being displayed in the games credits?

@snail: Precisely.

Quite correct. This is of course the Will Smith parable. The Larry King in the wiki? Not in fact host Larry King. Does that stop some smartass who isn't paying attention adding a celebrity birthday that cannotpreviously couldn't be removed? Nope.

Credits have always been a huge challenge for GB. Coping with multiple names is a nightmare.

Anyway my belief is that you should not be able to buy your way into the database. Credits should represent work, not financial support. Why is my $60 to buy a released game worth "less" then my $5 to get in the credits before it's released?

@brackynews: Not to bring this off topic, but I removed the birthday.